Bush insists on free elections before lifting Cuba trade embargo

President Bush yesterday dismissed calls to lift a four-decade trade embargo on Cuba, and challenged Fidel Castro to release political prisoners and to allow free elections next year.

Less than a week after the former president Jimmy Carter called for the restrictions to be scrapped, Mr Bush said: "Well-intentioned ideas about trade will merely prop up this dictator, enrich his cronies and enhance the totalitarian regime. [Trade] will not help the Cuban people.

"If Cuba's government takes all the necessary steps to ensure that the 2003 elections are certifiably free and fair, and if Cuba also begins to adopt meaningful market-based reforms, then, and only then, will I work with the United States Congress to ease the ban on trade and travel."

He vowed to maintain existing sanctions, which have been challenged by a growing coalition in Congress.

Mr Bush matched fierce criticism of Mr Castro as "a tyrant who uses brutal methods to enforce a bankrupt vision" with a pledge of support for the island's people and its democracy movement. "The United States recognises that freedom sometimes grows step by step, and we will encourage those steps," he said.

Mr Bush was careful to quote Cuba's own constitution in defence of free elections and opposition parties.

"The United States has no designs on Cuban sovereignty," he said. Cuban dissidents, who are deeply divided over the lifting of the US embargo, have long had to walk a fine line between accepting American aid and moral support, and playing into the hands of Mr Castro, who dismisses all his opponents as American puppets and CIA agents.

Mr Bush laid out his challenge to Mr Castro on the 100th anniversary of Cuba's independence from Spain. After speaking at the White House in the morning, he flew to Florida, where there are half a million Cuban voters whose support proved crucial in the 2000 presidential election.

Speaking to Cuban Americans in Miami, he mixed foreign policy with a public display of support for his brother, Jeb Bush, the Florida governor, who is preparing for a tough re-election fight later this year.

"We are here to proclaim proudly to the entire world that the Cuban people's love of liberty cannot and will not be denied'" he said, to a standing ovation.

Sprinkling his speech with phrases in Spanish, Mr Bush called Cuba's Communist-run elections a "fraud and a sham" lasting 43 years. "Mr Castro, once, just once, show that you're unafraid of a real election," he said.